Weakest Link in Network Security

Your small-business network may be protected by firewalls, intrusion detection and other state-of-the-art security technologies. And yet, all it takes is one person’s carelessness, and suddenly it’s as if you have no network security at all.

In March 2006, a major financial services firm with extensive network security disclosed that one of its portable computers was stolen. The laptop contained the Social Security numbers of nearly 200,000 people… An employee of the firm, dining in a restaurant with colleagues, had locked the laptop in the trunk of a SUV. During dinner, one of the employee’s colleagues retrieved an item from the vehicle and forgot to re-lock it. As fate would have it, there was a rash of car thefts occurring in that particular area at that particular time, and the rest is history.

No matter how secure your network may be, it’s only as secure as its weakest link. And people–meaning you and your employees–are often the weakest link. It’s important to note that poor security puts your business, as well as your partners, at risk. As a result, many enterprises and organizations, such as credit-card companies, now specify and require minimum levels of security you must have in order to do business with them.

Here are nine ways to minimize the risks that people can pose to the security of your company’s data:

This blog is run by the authors of FindProtected.
FindProtected is a security program that allows you to search for password protected files. With FindProtected, you can effectively identify protected files containing sensitive data on your network.

This entry was posted
on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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